July 28, 2006
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Show No Partiality, Part 1
By Anthony de Mello
Look at your life and see how you have filled its emptiness with people. As a result they have a stranglehold on you. See how they control your behavior by their approval and disapproval. They hold the power to ease your loneliness with their company, to send your spirits soaring with their praise, to bring you down to the depths with their criticism and rejection.
Take a look at yourself spending almost every waking minute of your day placating and pleasing people, whether they are living or dead. You live by their norms, conform to their standards, seek their company, desire their love, dread their ridicule, long for their applause, meekly submit to the guilt they lay upon you; you are terrified to go against the fashion in the way you dress or speak or act or even think.
And observe how even when you control them you depend on them and are enslaved by them.
People have become so much a part of your being that you cannot even imagine living a life that is unaffected or uncontrolled by them. As a matter of fact, they have convinced you that if you ever broke free of them, you would become an island—solitary, bleak, unloving. But the exact opposite is true. How can you love someone whom you are a slave to? How can you love someone whom you cannot live without?
Comments (11)
Great post. I feel as if the post speaks to me. However, I have not love anyone to the point that I am a slave to (except…my self. jk:)
I think it took me years to get over people pleasing but I don’t do that anymore I don’t think but one never knows. Judi
Have a good weekend
I think being attatched to someone to such an extent that you are a voluntary slave isn’t love, it’s obsession. Love allows what you love to be free, not possessed. The thought that you can’t live without someone is a myth unless you are an infant and would starve to death without someone to care for you. When the one we love dies, or leaves, life goes on. It is painful for a while, but we survive. Thinking of love as an uncontrollable obsession and dependency upon the one you love, makes love sound like a disease. In fact I think it is called CoDependency, creates addictive behaviors, and usually requires therapy.
Funny how dependent we have all become upon others to lead us into hell. We substitute dependent for friends, and we convince our self they our friends, until we then realize they are not friends, we are being lead into performing things we hate most, like drinking, smoking, committing adultry and more, we are friends until the end, the problem is which end for better of for worse. I have been around, I find you to be my friend, but there are those I would now want to give them the time of day, shocking. If I were to spend my time around friends, I probably would not be alone, nor unattached. The problem is I do not follow others into the stream of hell and back…I like being myself for myself and none other…I have no time to be guessing what is right or wrong, or am I doing the right thing anymore, so rather then find someone to put the blame on, I would much rather be alone hanging around with you on xanga because you are too far from me…
I love your material, love uncle michael
Funny how dependent we have all become upon others to lead us into hell. We substitute dependent for friends, and we convince our self they our friends, until we then realize they are not friends, we are being lead into performing things we hate most, like drinking, smoking, committing adultry and more, we are friends until the end, the problem is which end for better of for worse. I have been around, I find you to be my friend, but there are those I would now want to give them the time of day, shocking. If I were to spend my time around friends, I probably would not be alone, nor unattached. The problem is I do not follow others into the stream of hell and back…I like being myself for myself and none other…I have no time to be guessing what is right or wrong, or am I doing the right thing anymore, so rather then find someone to put the blame on, I would much rather be alone hanging around with you on xanga because you are too far from me…
I love your material, love uncle michael
so very true..
happy sat. my dear.
ick. Don’t like this post.
It ignores the fundamental nature of relationships and society: that of interdependence. We all create each other by being extensions of each other. We forge images and roles of ourselves from how we see ourselves reflected(how other people treat us). But this post seems to say that is it, there is nowhere further to go. But this is not true. When you realize what’s going on and that you can be unlimited, it all becomes a kind of game. It becomes apparent that if you ever create an image of yourself, its entirely relative to your surroundings and not your true nature. Its simply a convention to play some sort of game.
The key is being able to act freely according to your own tastes, while being able to love yourself for it. Then the rest matters a whole lot less/
thanks for the great read trimtab:D
Funny, most Churches call Interdependence to the point of not being able to survive of others disapprove of you “Fellowship”.
When we worry so much about the approval of others, that is rearranges our priorities, then Truth will always be crushed before it has time to rise forth and give Life.
at the same time, we are creatures made for both Love and Relationship.
Intriguing post and the reactions it has generated. My first thought was we should all embrace celibacy! One thing that can be said of life is that it finds ways to sustain itself, from the conception and birth of new life to the ways nature is capable of regenerating herself. In some respects, is our interaction – even dependence – on people unlike the interaction between egg and sperm which gives birth to new life? Without that interactive presence would we have anyway to picture ourselves?